Transcripts For CSPAN3 Forum Considers Future Of U.S. Trade Policy 20170725

Cspan 2 and watch anytime on cspan. Org. And listen on the free cspan radio app. Next, a discussion on the future of u. S. Trade policy and current trade Protection Measures proposed by President Trump. Well hear from former clinton and obama trade officials as they talk about protectionist policies. The role of the u. S. In the World Trade Organization, and President Trumps proposed renegotiation of the north American Free trade agreement known as nafta. This is an hour and a half. Glad to see everyone here. I am john mayo, a professor of economics, business and Public Policy at Georgetown Universitys Mcdonough School of business. I am also the executive director of our Host Institution for today, the Georgetown Center for business and Public Policy. I will tell you that we are delighted today to have a discussion on something very important, near and dear to the Georgetown Center, and that is the subject of trade policy. And in particular, we are going to examine the issue of whether trade remedies, thinks tariffs, quotas and the like, remedy act to remedy unfair trade practices, or are they themselves simply protectionist policies . Tod todays panel will be moderated by bob vastine, a senior industry fellow at the center. He has taken a wonderful lead in promoting and advancing the gorgetown hill series that has clearly gotten so popular over the years. Were glad to have you here. I wont steal bobs thunder, but i will simply, in terms of introducing the panelists, i will simply say it is an extraordinary Blue Ribbon Group of people who will be talking today. I will also say that, when we looked at the list of registrants for today, we saw a number of experts in the audience. So we wanted to make sure to have ample time for questions and answers. In that regard, let me tell you that we would love to hear from you, so be forming your questions as you hear the panelists speak, but when its time for q a, please do the following. Please simply raise your hand and wait for a microphone to be brought to you. This is an event that is being recorded for posteritys sake and being broadcast live, so it is really a nice idea to be able to, number one, identify yourself and to be able to identify your organization. So, with that, let me turn it over to bob vastine who will in turn introduce the panelists. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, everyone, for being here. It is a great group. We are riding a dramatic wave of change in u. S. Trade policy. Some think this bodes well. Others that think that it will rip the fabric of our legal and business relationships with countries that are deemed to be taking advantage of the u. S. , such as in treaties like the nafta. For a thorough examination of this point of view i call your attention to an editorial in todays wall street journal. At the core of this controversy is the role of trade remedies, provisions in u. S. Law that allow the u. S. To remedy Foreign Trade practices like dumping or that may threaten the nations security. The provisions have been enacted by congress over decades. They were an accepted pillar of u. S. Trade policy, many believe that at the end of the day they do not benefit the u. S. Economy. So they have always continued contained provisions that allow the executive, the president , to provide a restraint by tempering their reach and the impact of these socalled remedies in the national interest. Now we are in a position where the president seems not to be interested in restraint. I quote his remarks to a Business Group on monday. Quote, for decades washington has allowed other nations to wipe out millions of american jobs through unfair trade practices. Wait until you see whats up for you. So today we have a panel representing sharply different viewpoints. I would like to begin by introducing briefly the members of the panel starting on my right. I think its my right. The first is chad bound, at the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a senior fellow. The bios are more complete in your handout. He served previously as senior economist for International Trade and investment at the white house on the council of economic advisers and as a lead economist at the world bank. Steve clays is a partner at wily ryan and former inhouse counsel at the white house. He is now at a law firm assisting International Trade and policy clients. Next is tom sneereninger, who is the president of the committee to support u. S. Trade laws, the csustl. He asked me not to try to pronounce that. Manufacturers, workers and others dedicated to the enhancement of u. S. Trade laws. He is heavily engaged in particularly u. S. Steel policy for a number of years. Next we have bill reinsch, a distinguished fellow with the stimson center. He works principally are the he served prominently as president of the national Foreign Trade council. He was an assistant secretary of commerce. I am also glad to say i have known him for a long time. We both worked for very distinguished senators. He for senator john hynes of pennsylvania and i for senator john chaffy of rhode island. Finally we have nelson cunningham, very confused here by the paper. Is president and cofounder of mclarty associates, a Prominent International Strategic Advisory firm, prior to that he served in the white house as special adviser to president clinton on western hoffemisphere affairs a as general counsel. He has a wide and well established reputation in this field and we are glad to have him and the others here with us today. So well start with opening remarks from each. To five to seven minutes. However long it may take. And when thats completed well turn to the audience for questions. And again, thank you all for being here. So at this moment i will turn to mr. Bowman. Thank you, chad. Can i remind you, speakers, to punch the button. The green light will come on. Thats essential. As john said, this is all being televised live. Thanks, bob and georgetown for the opportunity to be here and to share the stage with the panel. So my name is chad bound, senior fellow with the Peterson Institute. My life and research is essentially on this topic of trade remedy. The first question we should ask is what are trade remedies. We think of them historically as being things like auntdumping. Counter veiling duties and something called a Global Safeguard. Anti dumping is a policy governments use to deal with unfair trade, lowpriced imports. Counter veiling duties are unfair trade thats subsidized imports by Foreign Governments. A Global Safeguard is nothing unfair necessarily. Its just there is a surge in imports. These are policies that the United States has used for decades, and policies that governments around the world use as well. There are special rules that allow governments to use these under our International Trade agreements, in particular the World Trade Organization and, before that, the general agreement on tariffs in trade. In some sense this is nothing really new. What ive done for my last 15 or so years is to study these things. I built a database that folks can look into these things if you want. What i thought i would do in my time is to describe what it is that we are seeing in the data and what we think this might mean for the United States, the Global Economy, especially in light of changes that are happening right now under the Trump Administration. So, even before the Trump Administration came into effect, you know, countries use antidumping, counter veiling duties especially. The United States is no different. Its one of the worlds most frequent users of these policies. Over the last couple of years, the United States has started to use these to restrict slightly more imports than normal but nothing really outside of the ordinary. The United States has not used them all that much. With one exception. The exception is to deal with imports from china. So the main target of the United States use of both antidumping and also counter veiling duties since chinas accession into the wto in 2001 has basically been china. So really, for the United States, the trade remedy policies have been kind of an antichina policy to deal with imports coming in from china. And even though chinas export growth has been tremendous, you know, and by my estimates as of the end of 2016, about 9 of u. S. Imports from china are being dealt with through these types of policies. So the claims by the Trump Administration that no previous administrations had ever done anything about imports from china is patently untrue. You know, dating back to the Bush Administration, certainly under the Obama Administration. These policies have been used to slow down imports from china. Now, there are current problems in the Global Economy that we can attribute some of them to china. So we can talk about the over capacity problem in steel. The over capacity problem in aluminum. But these are really also just kind of symptoms of deeper problems which are that china is fundamentally a different type of economy than the United States, western europe, japan, korea, market oriented economies. When china came into the wto in 2001 there was an expectation that china may become more like us. More market oriented but it hasnt happened automatically. So we are at a critical juncture today, 15, 16 years after chinas entry into the wto, about what to do about the fact that china has not become a market economy and are the rules of the trading system we have right now adequate to deal with that. The problems would have been there regardless of who won the 2016 election and whether or not we had the issues of steel and aluminum over capacity. As i mentioned, other administrations have used antidumping and counter veiling duties. The Trump Administration, when they came into office, has chosen to do things a little bit differently. They, of course, are also using antidumping, counter veiling duties but they have, in their use of these sorts of import restricting policies, escalated a lot of the political rhetoric. Many of you probably havent heard of trade remedies before the Trump Administration, and thats because they typically fly under the radar. They are not something that generate a lot of political attention. The Trump Administration has changed that, in a number of different instances but most recently it was with respect to cases against canada and mexico on topics like soft wood lumber and sugar. The political escalation to the level of the secretary of commerce even, let alone the president , is rather unprecedented. And then, raises the issue of foreign leaders also having to get involved in these types of issues and then becoming less technocratic. Thats one big distinction with this administration. The second is they have pushed beyond using the more traditional trade remedies that are well known, well understood and used by countries around the world, not just the United States. Pushing into use of laws that we really havent utilized, and what i have in mind here are these section 232 investigations, the National Security, the threat that steel imports or aluminum imports are somehow a threat to the United States National Security, and the investigation is currently ongoing under the section 232 law. The last time we saw one of these investigations was back in 2001. It has been a rarely used law. And it provides tremendous discretion for the president to invoke, you know, a sweeping sets of trade barriers if he were to so choose. So thats, you know we can come back to the discussion about whether we think there is a National Security argument for stopping imports of steel or aluminum. I am not of the view that there is. And the main reason that i would argue for that is most of the steel and aluminum that we currently import into the United States is not from our quoteunquote military adversaries. Because of these policies weve already halted much of the steel and ilaluminum that we might import from china. Most of it comes from canada. Steel comes from mexico, germany, japan. These, to my mind, are not military adversaries. Theyve historically been allies and not a threat to the United States National Security. Other initiatives of the Trump Administration in the realm of trade remedies in the section 232 cases was the government selfinitiated the cases. That is typically not done. It has happened before but is extraordinarily rare. Typically it is companies or labor unions that come forward and file these cases. By the Trump Administration selfinitiating the cases, they have essentially changed the playing field. And said to business, we are open for protection. We are open for trade barriers if you want it. And in my mind, that has then led to the next outcome, which is we have also seen use of or initiation of cases under the third trade law, this section 201, the Global Safeguard law. We are we have two new cases, one on solar panels and one on washing machines. The last section 201 case we saw was also back in 2001 on steel. Much like today, back then we had an overcapacity problem in the Steel Industry. The george w. Bush administration utilized the section 201 law to deal with that. The import surge that was coming in globally. Imposed a set of import restrictions. It was managed. It was done through normal channels and did not escalate out of control and is very different from what were potentially seeing today. The last point that i wanted to make about trade remedies in order to set the table. To highlight again just how important they are in the contemporary discussion is what happened this week when the u. S. Trade representative released their negotiating objectives for the nafta. The new nafta that the Trump Administration is going to negotiate with canada and mexico. On page 14 of that set of negotiating objectives there is a subsection called trade remedies. They had two main proposals. One is to eliminate something called chapter 19, which is a special dispute Settlement Forum in which any of the nafta countries can challenge or investigate antidumping, counter veiling duty restrictions imposed on their exporters. Its served as an extra Check Balance to make sure that the abuse of those remedies does not happen. The second was to potentially end a current provision of nafta which is to say when countries impose a Global Safeguard under the section 201 law in the United States that they generally end up exempting other nafta countries. So if we think back to the Bush Administration of 2001 2002, the steel safeguard import restrictions, it was a 30 import tariff imposed on countries around the world with the exception of the Free Trade Agreement partners. With exception of canada and mexico. The Trump Administration would like to remove these elements which, to my mind, are a negative signal in that it really suggests that one of their main interests are making it easier to reimpose trade barriers against canada and mexico in particular and potentially hurt trade in the north american region, and hurting potential supply chain activity in the north american region. So, with that, i will stop. That hopefully sets the stage for some of what we are seeing out there, thank you. Very interesting. Thank you very much, chad. Thats very good. Steve, do you want to pick it up. Im sorry. Tom, please. Thank you. I am pleased to be here under the auspices of my two favorite institutions Georgetown University and the house of representatives. Very good years in both places. I am going to make three rather pedestrian points, but i think it will help us key everything in context for the later conversation. The first point is that everybody is for rulesbased trade, but we reserve the right to pick the rules we like and that we dont like. The in the case of the remedy rules, and ill speak exclusively of antidumping is counter veiling duty. Abcde. There is a dividing line, and its really defined by how you answer the following question. Do train remedies distort free trade or protect and enable free trade. Now, thats that divide has created a lot of a lot of sharp opinions on one side and the other. For example, if you believe trade remedies distort free trade, then the other side consists of lazy, incompetent throwbacks, unable to cut it in the Global Economy, unwilling to try and selfishly driving up costs for everybody else. If you believe remedies enable free trade, then the other side consists of naive ideologues who would probably vote to repeal the anti smuggling laws and take receiving stolen property out of the criminal code. Very few people have been known to cross that line. I will say this. The 232s, if nothing else, has certainly calmed down a lot of the antiadcbd language. And in fact, right now for the first time in 15 or 16 years i have actually heard something favorable said about the steel 201. But a number of organizations that have weighed in against the 232 that spoken favorably of the adcbd laws. Quoting one from a group not known to be advocates. These laws have well established procedural requirements for determining injury and assessing the appropriate scope and level of remedies. Thats progress in my opinion. The only people who have actually people who bend steel or form it into their products, who have always been opposed to steel dumping in subsidy cases because it raises the price of their inputs. Now theyre filing their own cases because china has lowered some of its targets into the downstream markets. Similarly, we had a steel exec one time who had just joined aisi who called in a fit of anger because the faro alloy. You find that where you stand in the chain of the movement of that product from raw material into the consumers hands has a lot to do with how you see the trade laws. And finally, there are elected politicians who have been known to change their minds on the trade laws, usually in response to Political Forces in their constituency. If anybody today changes their mind from their side to my side, ill buy you a real lunch. My second point is that strict enforcement of strong trade laws has a disproportionate impact on trade support for liberalization. Its true the specifics of certain cases fly beneath the radar screen, but dont for a minute think that the people dont have a sense of whether theyre being cheated out of their jobs and whether the government is doing anything about it. There has been a lot of talk since the election that, well, the job loss is due to downsizing of the economy or productivity gains or that people dont realize how much they benefit from liberalized trade. All that is absolutely true, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of the knowledge that there is unfair trade in the market and that it hasnt been adequately addressed. There is a group called the alliance for American Manufacturing which i have been involved in. They conduct polling every year on Public Attitudes about manufacturing. They have been doing this long before the last election. Every year uniformly there is a supermajority of americans answering that survey saying, yes, they believe some trade is unfair, yes, they believe the government ought to be doing something about it, yes, they will vote for a politician who feels that way about it, and yes, they will vote against a politician who doesnt feel that way about it. And so, you know, these polls have been shared with political campaigns every year, especially in president ial years. But this past year both major candidates finally read them and embraced them, and there was a bidding war on trade enforcement that we have been trying to instigate for decades. The fact is, one of the candidates read the gut and exploited it a little better than the other, and here we are. The third point is that, besides Popular Support, there is pronounced Political Support. Here we are under the auspices of an academic institution, so im going to go ahead and say it. Arguing whether remedy laws are protectionist or not is almost an academic exercise and certainly will be for the next two or three years. The fact is that the Congress Even long before this election, the congress has repeatedly made clear that it is the congressional intent these laws be kept strong and strictly enforced. I have five examples, maybe i can get into them later if time permits. Ill give you one. Five years ago a federal judge said that the Commerce Department had never, really, truly been authorized by congress to bring antisubsidy cases against a nonmarket economy, china, and he said, well, you know, if the congress meant to do that, they should pass a law. Two months later, at the beginning of 2012, which was the Election Year for president obamas reelection. Totally partisan environment. That law passed. Unanimous consent in the senate. Suspension in the house. 10 to 1 ratio. 370 to 39. But who is counting. So, you know, it makes sense that members of congress would feel that way about the trade laws. They didnt want the trade laws undermined in the doho round. They passed legislation that beefs up the energy test and customs ability to police up fraud and circumvention. The other day the House Appropriations committee embraced the secretary ross request for more money for enforcement and compliance, 5 million more. And unbidden, added the following language, the committee instructs the ita to make the enforcement of antidumping and counter veiling duty the highest priority and recommends it focus specifically on reducing case law case backlog ands thoroughly investigating the extent to which trade law evasion harms domestic industries. I have added the emphasis. So ill leave it at that. Substantively, from a Popular Support and Political Support point of view, we are in an era in which you can expect aggressive acvdc prosecution. Selfinitiated or not, and i think we better find a way to understand how that contributes to Popular Support for free trade. It ran out of its support in the last year, and it has to earn it back. Thank you. Okay. Bill reinsch. Thank you, bob, its a real honor to be back here on the hill. It has been a while. I am going to deal with the question of whether the remedy is correct on fair practices and alter foreigners behavior that we dont like. Ill do that by trying to talk about economic effects, political effects and behavioral effects kts whi effects, which kind of overlap. I think on the economic side, using the term correction may be asking too much. I think chad noted, and i am talking primarily about avcvd here. I will allude to the others later. They are authorized by gat wto rules. Their purpose has been to offset the unfair act. The duties are imposed to the dumping and injury found. You have to prove harm and the crime, as it were. But the consequence, the added tariff, is not a penalty as much as it is an off set. There is a fairly abstruse academic argument that the amount of the additional duty should only be sufficient to offset the injury rather than sufficient to offset the dumping, but the rules permit offsetting the full amount of the dumping or subsidization. Thats what u. S. Law provides for. Do they work . First i think it depends upon what you mean by work. Because as an offset they have limitations. They are intended to offset the crime. They are not intended to save the industry, to restore it to its former glory or solve all its problems. That might happen, but it would be a happy side effect. Its not really the purpose of these provisions despite what some will say about their intention in filing cases. The more important thing to say about whether or not they work is something tom alluded to. They dont work if they are circumvented. That makes enforcement a large part of this issue. There are a lot of ways to circumvent antidumping or counter veiling duty orders. Some are illegal under most countries domestic laws because they involve fraud like mislabelling, or lying about the contents of a container or Something Like that. Other things like shipping goods to a third country and relabelling them as having originated in that country is a popular activity particularly in steel as well as making changes in a product in a second country in order to reclassify it as something not covered by the order and then shipping it into the United States. So, there is a lot of ways to get around them. And if you have good enforcement and the last several administrations certainly the last one, clearly this one, are determined to put a lot of resources into more enforcement. You can probably have a much greater likelihood of them actually achieving their objective. When they work i mean, i guess the next question is you have to say what does work mean. I think there is occasionally people talk about working in terms of their effect on the number of imports or the effect on market share and things like that, all of which is relevant. But i think, to me, the more important indication is do they produce a price effect because thats the point. The purpose of adding a tariff is to raise the price of the imported product. To get it out of the dumped range and presumably to put it at a level at which the domestic product can compete. Back in the dark ages, in fact, when i started doing this, which was the 80s, the biggest argument against these acts, or these orders, was that they were inflationary. That they would increase the price of downstream products, cars, toasters. Talking about steel, cars, toasters, ovens, refrigerators, would become more expensive. I can tell you a joke about that but in the interest of time ill skip it. We dont worry quite so much about inflation now, though its still an issue. The point of the argument is a little bit different. But you want, ideally, if you are the petitioner, the domestic party bringing the case, you want to see a price effect. That may or may not happen in the real world. The domestic seller may choose to eat all or part of the tariff by reducing its price and making less money in order to stay competitive. Second, Consumer Preferences may be based on issues other than price. So the import might remain attractive even if it is more expensive. One thing that means at least to me is that these remedies tend to work best in the case of fairly fungable products. That makes steel an exceptional good case for this kind of thing. Complex products that are sold directly to consumers like automobiles might not respond the pricing might not respond, the market may not respond the same way. The size of the added tariff also matters in the real world. For example, if avocados are a dollar each i dont know if anybody has accused the mexicans of avocado dumping. Well see. If theyre a dollar each, a 10 dumping margin would make them 1. 10 each. My suspicion is that raising the price from 1 to 1. 10 wont make a huge difference in the market. Particularly if the domestic producers take advantage of the increased tariff and raise their prices as well. Maybe only to 1. 05 or 1. 08 but the margin stays smaller. So realworld effect is a little bit harder to predict, i think, than academic world effect. I should say in passing that the adcvd laws are not the only measures for trade practices. There is section 301 as you may hear more about as time unfolds. There was an article this morning that got into this in inside trade as a potential alternative to steel course of action, giving the president the authority to take action. Its a less mechanical law than adcbd in the sense that there is not an ajudicatory process. It is different in the sense that its not really designed to offset the practice. It is designed to impose a penalty that will persuade the other country to change its practice. This was a widely used statute in the 80s. The uruguay round put it out of business by establishing a dispute settlement mechanism that made all these things vulnerable to wto litigation so it hasnt been much used since then. But in its day it was useful. Largely this is something that why it might appeal to the current president. Initiating an investigation was an enormous piece of leverage because you announce that you have identified pick a country china, as engaging in this unfair practice and you are going to investigate. If you determine that that in fact has happened then you are going to take some action. That usually starts a negotiation. And a negotiation that usually ends in some accommodation by the allegedly offending country. So its a process that has its limitations, which i wont get into right now, but you may be seeing more about it. As was also mentioned, you have 232s. Ill come back to those in a minute. You also have 201s, not designed to deal with unfair practices but designed to deal with a surge and giving the industry time to adjust to the surge. All these things have mixed records, and we can talk about that. In terms of political effects, these laws are widely purviewed as providing a political safety valve because theyre something the legislators can point to deflect protectionist pressures from constituents. So your congressman doesnt have to sponsor a bill for protection for explain why he wont. He can point to the administrative process. File a dumping petition. That will address your problem. You tell them, the complaining party should use that first. That allows legislators to make legislation the path of last resort rather than the path of first resort and gets this thing off the table in the congress which, trust me, is what a lot of legislators have wanted to do over the years. Finally, behavioral effects. Its hard to make the case that trade remedies by themselves alter another countrys behavior. Even if the remedy imposes a significant economic cost. The offending action was usually taken for domestic political reasons at home, and the government is often willing to pay a price for that. It doesnt mean there is no hope. Steel is a good example. The many adcbd cases filed against china have reduced chinese steel imports into the u. S. But have also pushed them into other countries which have passed them on to us via circumvention for further processing. The remedy solved one problem and began another one and didnt solve the issue which in this case is over capacity. Thats why were talking about a 232. In the interest of time, i wont get into the question of the viability of 232. We can discuss that later. I do have views about that. I would just say that the right answer here, putting aside all practicality, the right answer is probably a multilateral agreement on over capacity. And i think the hamburg g20 meeting got it right. Lets give relevance to the global forum on exactly that subject. Lets give them some deadlines, see if they come through with some solutions. Unfortunately for the president this is a process that, because its Multi Lateral, spins out over time. In the end its the right and easiest answer. If its a Multi Lateral process, everybody can say theyre not the target, that everybody is the target. So its not for the chinese, part of the american plot to encircle and destroy them. Its part of a Multi Lateral problem. And they can say to their constituency at the end. Everybody is taking a hit. Everybody is making concessions. They are probably making more than anybody else. I think its a more feasible remedy. With that i will stop. One thing about coming after a number of speakers who have gone into depth on the issues is what do you talk about. I want to hit a few things, you know, hopefully rather quickly. First is to answer bobs question at the beginning of are trade remedy laws a remedy or are they protectionist. In true lawyer fashion ill say it depends. Because any law can be applied in an unclear way, in an improper way, be it environmental law, criminal law, tax laws. So, you know, whether one makes a judgment on how the terry gyml grimley laws are being applied, does it mean the laws are in and of themselves also a bad thing, are they in and of themselves protectionist. I would say no. In and of themselves they are there to remedy trade types of trade that, you know, for a long time, not only in the United States but in many other countries have viewed to be detrimental, to be unfair. Again, these laws go way back to right before and after world war i. Actually, our friends the canadians were first to have an antidumping duty law. The u. S. Law is based on the trade act of 1930. So this is not you know, it is not anything new. Weve had antidumping duty laws for a long time because it has been recognized that economic circumstances can occur that you need to have some type of remedy. You know, as far as dumping goes, selling a product in the u. S. At an unfairly low price possibly because a country is over capacity, because of other things, you know, essentially exploiting unemployment, theres a need to respond to that, to remedy it, on countervailing duty laws you remedy subsidies. Is it fair for a superintendent country to essentially have to compete against a Foreign Government who is providing either free electricity, free capital and other support to its foreign competitor . Again, the purpose of the remedy is to offset these. So there are deep policy reasons for having these laws. As bill touched on, there are deep political reasons for having these laws that, you know, as also tom pointed out, theres wide support in congress for these trade laws. Why is it there . I think most members see the policy value of it, but, frankly, theres a political value of it, too. It has the unfair trade laws have allowed other nominally protrade times of legislation to go through. Most recently when trade Promotion Authority was reauthorized, there was also another set of laws that amended the antidumping duty laws that came along with it which created the political space for some members to also support tpa. Now, those who are in the you know, put themselves in the free trade camps, thats ridiculous, you vushouldnt have to do that shouldnt have to pay off people to support free trade. I think in my own view you flip it on to the free trade campus. If you guys did a better job in promoting free trade we wouldnt have to do it. If you started off every argument for free trade by quoting a scottish guy who died 200 years ago, in cloth and wine, you have already lost 90 of your audience in 2017. Well, you might have it is amazing how much thats still done. So theres a very important political aspect to it, too. Real quickly, something more recent, aspects of how these have all been applied, particularly as chad brought up, i think a bear thinking about, are these inherently antichina . Yes, there has been an increase of cases against china. Theres also been a decrease in cases against japan, south korea and other asian other countries. Whats happened . Well, production and exports to the u. S. From shifted from those countries to china. As the volume of exports from china have increased, the potentiality of trade frictions and these types of problems coming up will increase. I think it is a natural aspect of the fact that increased trade with china will be accompanied with increased number of these types of cases against chinese imports. Another thing to keep in mind is, you know, how much are the number of these cases or the nature of these cases really a reflection of any given administrations trade policies or its own initiatives. I would say not very much. Because a lot of these you know, not a lot, almost 99 of these cases, particularly in the u. S. , are brought by companies, not by the government, not by the administration. It is not the administration who decided to bring a case against lumber, which actually started under the previous administration. It was not the administrations decision to bring a case against sugar from mexico, which also occurred under the previous administration. The fact is lumber and the sugar cases are excellent examples of this because the canadian lumber case, as some know, this was the fifth time weve had cases against canadian soft wood lumber. Theres an intrinsic policy problem between the u. S. And canada on soft wood lumber that goes back beyond the 1980s when the first case was brought, and some have shown it goes back to 1880s and theres a brief border war over it. So these are not new issues. The same thing with sugar from mexico. What happened recently with sugar from mexico is there was an agreement, the sugar industry was already complaining of problems with how the agreement was enforced on the mexican side, long before President Trump was elected. So, again, does this really reflect, you know, a Trump Administration initiative . Not really. So, you know, the main thing to keep in mind i think agency you look at what is going on is to separate the rhetoric from the reality. True, this administration talks about trade in a different way than past administrations and uses kind of different words, but the reality of the fact is theres really not that much difference. When this administration said that, well, gee, no, we dont have to follow wqo decisions, every administration said that back to the Clinton Administration because the United States, and any other wto member does not have to follow every wto decisions. There are wto decisions the United States has not been following for years, and yet the world still turns. There are wto decisions that other significant economies have not followed for years, and yet the trading system still exists. So i think it is important not to get hyperbolic about it, to yee really try to see what is going on versus how it is being talked about. I will stop there. Thank you. Thats very helpful and very interesting. Thank you very much. Nelson. Although steve and i did not plan this, his ending matches perfectly with my beginning. I am pulling im going to pull the lens back and try to give you my idea of what is actually going on with this administrations trade policy, to put a context around the question of the specific issue of protectionism and this specific issue of trade remedies. Steve, i see it differently than you do. I think this administration is deadly serious about what about changing the way we deal with trade, about changing the way that we deal with our trading partners, and the evidence i would argue out there is manifest in their words, and it is beginning to be manifest in their actions. I want to start with a document that i really think all of you should go take a look at. It is an oped that h. R. Mcmaster and gary kohn did in the wall street journal may 31st, right after the president returned from his first trip to europe. It is entitled, and if you are going to layout if you think it is a little early to talk about a trump doctrine, read this oped because i think it lays out the trump doctrine in a way that is very specifically relevant to trade. It is entitled, America First doesnt mean america alone. It says, while meeting with european leaders, the president reiterated his concern about our trade deficits with many european nations. Simply put, america will treat others as they treat us. And they layout the president s organizing vision. They said, the president had a clear outlook that the world is not a Global Economy, but in situation where nations, government and businesses engage and compete for advantage. So he does not approach even discussions with allies as Community Discussions but rather than as being part of an arena where we are competing. Then they go on, we, the United States bring to this forum unmatched political, cultural and moral strength. Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it. The world is an arena, were the biggest guy in the arena, and were going to use every bit of our force for our advantage. That is a very different view of the United States and its role in the world that weve seen since the end of world war ii. Now, how does this apply to trade . Well, the president has said clearly over and over and over again that he wishes to undo the unfair trade deficits that he believes exist have existed against the United States for decades. He has said this during the campaign. He said it repeatedly during his presidency. He has tweeted about it. Germany is very, very bad for having an 80 billion trade deficit with us, and he similarly talked about trade deficits with mexico, with china and others. The response i hear from some is, well and this was steves point. Look at the actions, not the words. You know, sometimes look at the president , he changes his mind, he says Different Things at different times, he can embrace different arguments. I would argue on trade, ive looked at his thinking on these issues for many, many years, and on trade and a related issue he has been remarkably consistent. Trade and immigration, i would argue, are the two steel rods that go through his thinking for decades. Immigration is ruining our country and ruining our countrys character, and trade is hollowing us out and we are the victims of unfair trade practices and short practices by our trading partners. Weve heard that from him over and over and over again. How does he measure this . He measures it very simply in bilateral trade deficits. There are economists at this tab table, there are probably economists in this room. Every economist i talked to said thats not the way you measure really imbalances. Bilateral trade deficits reflect certain factors. They often reflect differences in savings patterns between the countries. You should not look at bilateral trade practices as being indicative of unfair actions or problems in a relationship. Nevertheless, the president keeps on coming back to this. Now, okay, he talks about it. Is he acting on this . I would argue the evidence is now becoming very clear. We are here in the dog days of august, a time when in washington usually not much gets done. The fact that this room is full on a friday with hill staffers and others indicates that the dog days of july are actually quite a busy period. Just this week, and perhaps next week, were seeing four things that i would argue are going to help us understand where the president really stands on trade issue. One has already occurred two have already occurred and two may come out in coming days. The first that occurred is the meeting with the chinese counterpart, with the vice premiere of china in the china sed. Everybody who knows anything, everybody who follows this says it was a disaster. Before the meeting started they cancelled the meeting at the end where they talk about the progress made. Theres little said about the meeting. But the bit ral discussion remember, trump and xi met at maralago, they had cake, they sent a 100day schedule to address these issues. Here we are and the talks ended in failure. Number one. Number two, the 232 seal decision, which we are all waiting for imminently and we heard about this any day now this will come out and many of us suspect it will impose penalties on many of our trading partners, even though that many would argue are allies and not possible opponents in any sort of a military conflict. The third is a deficit report, which was commissioned, which was meant to look at the bilateral trade deficits the u. S. Has with trading partners around the world. Again, weve been waiting for this for weeks. We dont know when it will come out. The suspicion is that it will come out maybe today, maybe next week, and this will be, i would argue, the target list that the president will use to decide what countries to go after with trade deficit numbers he feels his administration can support and go behind. The fourth thing, and i want to turn to this now and spend a little time on it, are the nafta objectives which were mentioned, which came out on monday. This starts a 30day clock. This is the administrations objectives for the coming negotiations. Congress now has 30 days to comment. Actually, you now have 26 days to comment. The clock is ticking. In this report which will start a historic renegotiation of an agreement that most would argue has worked quite well, the president said to the president s team said two things i think are worth quoting. Their very first objective in this 17page report, number one, improve the u. S. Trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with the nafta countries. Now, theres a very small trade deficit with canada, and if you include services, you include the Services Surplus and theres a deficit, it is kind of a wash. With mexico theres a 60 billion trade deficit, that is true. The number one objective to reduce the trade deficit with the nafta countries. In the introduction which explains sort of more the theory of where theyre going it says, the new nafta will be modernized the reflect 21st century standards and will reflect a fairer deal, addressing americas persistent trade imbalances in north america. So we see the president has told his team, these are your marching orders, number one, to reduce that trade deficit. Well, how are you going to reduce a 60 billion trade deficit with mexico . This is a smart group of people and they may have a better answer than i have. I see three ways that you can adjust a bilateral trade deficit. One is tariffs. One is quotas, one is managed trade. If those are put on the table, i dont see how either of our trading partners are going to continue. I look at the impending nafta negotiations, and i see some very rough sledding coming up. It is going to be difficult to align the president s objectives, particularly that of removing shipping 60 billion you take 60 billion out of the mexican economy, that is hugely significant. I lost my train of thought. Pardon me. As these discussions go forward, were also going to have the overhang of the other steel rod in President Trumps thinking on these issues, and that is immigration. If anyone thinks that the wall and who will pay for the wall and immigration practices in general will not be overhanging the nafta discussions, i dont think you understand dynamics in mexico and you dont understand dynamics here in the american southwest. So let me bring this now to a conclusion. Before i do that, let me note, those of you who work for members here on the hill, you have 26 more days for your members to give their views on those nafta objectives. I know i know the committees of jurisdiction are looking at this. They may have something, but all of you out there may have may have comments to make, and this is the time to make it. If you want to shape these discussions, this is the very time to do it here in the dog days of july. I think were beginning to see very clear pattern in this administration of how theyre going to treat trade. President trump believes he was elected to upend the regime on trade. He believes he was elected to upend the status quo on immigration, and i think he is deadly serious about both of those, and his team is deadly serious about both of those. So when we look at the mcmaster and kohn oped, if the nafta negotiations are an arena, then we will bring to that forum our unmatched military, political, economic, cultural and moral strength, and canada and mexico, i guess you better bring yours. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. Steve, do you disagree with nelson . Well, you know, im not here to say i agree with everything thats in that op ed. That was a very im glad he brought it out. That was an important kind of statement from the administration on its view of the world. But and, again, as i said, yes, the administration and the president is talking about trade in a different way, but the themes of the problems of the perceived problems of unfair trade, the focus on the importance of the trade deficit, nafta not working are not new. Candidate barack obama went after nafta in 2008. You know, i could very easily get a lot of floor statements from a lot of members of congress on both sides focusing on the trade deficit, for better or worse. You know, you cant have a very good argument on what are the cau causes of the trade deficit, excellent expo situation a couple of weeks ago in the economist about the trade surplus with the rest of the world, and it is not because of currency or unfair trade. You know, they save more, they consume less, we consume more, we save less. A lot of that is part of it. These are not new themes. You know, theyve been out there for a long time. I kind of find this, you know, ironic and funny that, you know, a lot of the people who are now saying, oh, my gosh, i cant believe prumt esident trump is saying these things, he is just saying things others have been saying for a very long time. So the seeds for, you know, what were seeing today have been planted by others who sowed them over the past several decades talking about nafta, complaining about trade deficits, saying that, you know, any kind of trade there has to be you know, theres an element of unfairness to it. Now we are seeing the results of those several decades of statements. If i may, bob, i think that exactly makes my point because now were seeing actions. Obama might have made an offhand comment about renegotiating uk debate in ohio, but he did not send notice of nafta renegotiating objectives to the congress, nor did he bring the other two parties to the table. I think thats a very good point. Never in my experience since 1962 with trade negotiations have i seen such a determined barrage, maybe during it was a long time ago, but this is really pronounced campaign backed by repeated remarks, by rhetoric, by secretary ross. This is serious. This is not Just Campaign stuff. So i think i mean im interjecting as moderator, but i certainly have to side with nelson. Lets turn to the audience. Get off the hot seat here. You can come back, you have more time. Anybody have a comment . Right here, joanne. Hi. Thanks, everybody. This is on . It is. Im Joanne Thornton with policy connections. Thank you all. I wondered if we could talk a little bit about the arena that nelson mentioned in the context of negotiation as well as, well, what other countries may or may not be doing with respect to trade remedy law, whether it is in response to our trends or not. So, for example, in the nafta objectives, it seemed like there were some pretty important departures, some strengthening of the remedy laws beyond getting rid of chapter 19 and the safeguard extension. Third country dumping im thinking about, which was mentioned in that wall street journal article. At the wto, the chinese have made proposals that i gather are simply unacceptable to the u. S. , but is there a prospect of a fruitful discussion about trade remedy rules at the wto . The eu is implementing some reforms in its remedy law. So if anyone cares to address what is going on in the arena that will either be detrimental or helpful to us, that would be great. I think it is a great question. I would step back from it though and try to reiterate that thinking about it through the lens of trade remedies is really the reaction, right. So what we need to think about is what the underlying problem is that were trying to address. The underlying problem we are trying to address arguably right now is this stems back to dealing with china, and china is a different Economic System than what we have in the United States, and in the case of special case of steel and aluminum, these are special cases, steel we see these episodes of over capacity time and time again. Now it is china, you know. 15 years ago in 2002 it wasnt china, it was the collapse of asia, Asian Financial crisis, but we had to deal with it then, we had to deal with the recession of 91, 92, but today china grew tremendously, 10 to 12 , every year it needed lots and lots of steel. It bit up capacity. Its growth has slowed down, it doesnt need that steel back. So it faces a choice, does it layoff workers and manufacturing in Steel Production like we have done in the United States, or does it try to export some of that and not have to shut things down . That is the problem, the issue that has to be addressed. Trade remedies will not get us to a solution. We have already used trade remedies in the United States to stop the imports from china and arguably that tied our hands right now. We have little leverage to deal with china because we already stopped imports coming in from china. We have deal with the fact that steel ex pormports are going tor countries. We have to stop thinking about it through the lens of trade remedies and figure out a way to target the underlying problem. I think what came out of the g20 was potentially a solution, this oecd forum on over capacity and getting countries to the table and actually dealing with the underlying source of the concern here. Comment, bill . Good question, joanne. My only comment would be that the politics of this have changed, although the economics have changed, im not sure the politics have caught up with it. One of the interesting thing in the last 20 years has been through the internationalization of these rep remedies. For a long time it was the u. S. And a few countries. Now the indians file dozens of these, so do the chinese. Everyone has their own law. The japanese who were targets forever, mostly by americans, they have their own law. These countries have learned how to use those laws to prosecute in the same way we have. So you have everybody out there playing this game, where you used to have, you know, a group of people who felt like victims and a group of people who felt like they were aggrieved plaintiffs. Now you have everybody as both. In the world of Global Supply chains, you have a much more complex domestic, politically dynamic with every country. When i was at the nfgc i asked one of my members when this stuff was on the table, what do you think about dumping rules . He said, well, look, my company is were a petitioner in one case, we are respondent in another, and we buy products subject to a dumping duty order. You tell me what our position is. Company after company after company is finding themselves in that position. What has not happened yet in the wto, which i dont quite understand, is that the politics hasnt caught up with that reality. A number of countries, particularly japanese who are worse than the chinese on this, you know, are determined to dust these laws basically and render them harmless because they perceive themselves only a victim and not as beneficiaries. If you look what is actually happening in the economy, thats not true, but they continue to maintain the same position theyve had for years. I dont see any nearterm solution to this. I wouldnt say the United States is opposed to everything the chinese have offered. The United States has refused to negotiate on the grounds that the mandate for doing that has expired. Everybody else is opposed and has said so. So i dont think theyve got a bright future, and i dont see a nearterm outcome. But eventually because of the universality of the remedy i think the politics will catch up with that, and it may be easier to come to some conclusions that will produce, you know, some modest changes. Any other question . Oh, wait. Let me just agree that dumping cases, subsidy cases, et cetera, are treating the symptom and not the cause. It is especially in the Steel Industry it is the persistent overcapacity. I dont agree to the chinese argument that they merely over bit and miscalculated what they would need for their 12year plan or their fiveyear plan that have come out in sequence, have frequently talked about going abroad. They clearly intend to dominate the global Steel Production. It is far beyond what they would ever need. Theyve also become excellent at avoiding enforceable commitments about over capacity. They are master ropeadopers. I mean i was involved in u. S. Steel China Dialogue many years ago. There was a whole series of sneds under paulson and clinton, there were jcct meetings, et cetera, all of which had over capacity on the agenda, none of which resulted in anything enforceable. I must say, although im sorry for all of the other industries and Service Organizations that wanted to get something out of the current ced, i dont consider what happened in washington this week a disaster because for the first time the u. S. Basically said, this is on the agenda, this is at the top of the agenda, and were not going to start agreeing to a bunch of stuff and then go back and tell our industry, well, we raised it. You know, this was an important moment. It wasnt we dont know what happened in that room. There were no press conferences. There havent been any real good readouts or something of that. But the fact is Many Industries are now very upset with the way it came out, that thats not a bad thing because heretofore Many Industries got what they wanted and the Steel Industry has been upset. It is kind of a reversal of fortunes and creating a little leverage. I also dont blaelieve we have unilateral leverage left. There was a question right here. Lets go. Thank you. Im Bob Kleinberg from american university. To some extent of holds with antidumping, but it seems with the 232 and the buy america programs, there doesnt seem to be discussion at all of retaliation, precedent that were setting. I mean if we say buy american is great, then how do we react to europe saying, buy european in terms of airplanes and such . So im just curious as to your reaction about why retaliation, the effect on exporters u. S. Exporters seems to be totally ignored. So i think thats a great point, bob. We are i think starting to hear it in the media, and so, you know, we saw right before the g20 reporting by the Financial Times that the europeans have drawn up their product list. It is a 232, the steel case ultimately hits them. Theyre going to go after bourbon from kentucky and Dairy Products from wisconsin and florida orange juice, right . Similar strategies that have been pursued in the past. Think what this administration has yet to sort of fully internalize is retaliation is actually much more strategic and can be more economically costly and politically costly than the benefits of protection. Until you, i think, you have to you see it working its way out in practice, you dont realize it. But the threats that are happening out there, hoping to krystalize what the potential cost of the actions will be before the policy decisions are made to do them. Nelson, you want to comment . Just a quick. Again, 30,000 foot pulling the lens back, it is President Trumps view of retaliation is you punch me, im going to punch you harder. This has been his this is what he learned from roy kohn many years ago when roy kohn was his lawyer. You punch me, im going to punch you harder. I think if american industry goes to him and says, oh, were afraid of retaliation, he is going to say, just you wait. Wait, let em retaliate and see what i do. Right here. Joe carlson, itc. I was hoping maybe you guy also that International Trade commission . Yes, International Trade commission. I was hoping you guys could speculate about how you think selfinitiation at commerce might work out. What problem is this addressing . What is driving this . Do you see a major expansion in ac db cases in the next couple of years as a result of that . I will pick that up. Well, i mean, you know, secretary ross has talked about selfinitiating cases. I think although again, not to be repetitive, but the issue of selfinitiation has been around for a while. You know, obviously its been in the law for a long time. It has not been used very much, but over the past, id say, sen years, its been talked about more and more. You know, the perception is that to bring a case requires such an outlie of resources and time from an industry that is asserted to be already injured and not doing well and in financial straits, that, you know, the burden is too high to, you know, be able to avail themselves also of these laws and therefore the department of commerce should use its authority to selfinitiate. So thats the idea. You know, obviously no cases have been selfinitiated yet, and that kind of gets to my point, too, is, again, you got to look at where the rhetoric meets reality. At the end theres a lot of talk about action but so far there hasnt been any. And so both you know, theres rumors that commerce is open to the idea, but as you know, even if i mean i will say that companies, industries who think that this is a panacea will be sorely disappointed because theyre still going to have to go to the International Trade commission and show to the International Trade commission that the imports, not only are they unfairly priced or unfairly subsidized but theyre a cause of material injury or a threat of material injury, which is one thing i have to point out that we really havent gone into. You do need to make two showings, one that the imports are unfair either by price or s subsidy, but also theres a causal between the exports and the domestic industry being threatened with material injury. They still have to expend the resources to be successful with itc. They still have to expend resources to participate at the process at department of commerce to comment on information thats provided and things like that. So my own personal view, you know, it gets over what is already a fairly low statutory hump to get a case going at commerce, but after that i dont think it is going to be any great, you know, saving of resources or time. Okay. There was a hand here. Another question . Over here. Please go ahead. My name is trevor guy, im with eop. My question is for mr. Cunningham. So you described judging relationships with our trading partners based on bilateral surpluses or deficits. Im curious, what other metrics would you use to judge a relationship with our trading partners . Somebody whos worked on north american issues since the late 90s, i think our relationship with mexico and canada is so much broader than any bilateral trade deficit that to begin there or end there is terribly not only dangerous, but it is not based in anything truly important. Look at our relationship with europe. Yes, we have a substantial deficit with europe. They are selling goods to us. What, 150 billion more a year than we sell to them. Is that because theyre taking advantage of us or just because they make machines and cars that we want to buy . Economists will tell you it is about savings versus investment, and if we here in this country saved more, invested more, spent less, that would take care of our trade deficit bilaterally with most of our trading partners. I think any of them looking at us and saying, why are you punishing us because you are a hyperconsumer natio hyperconsuming nation, and i think thats a fair question. This is a comment i think is brandnew. You divide the world into the good and bad based on whether we have a deficit or not, thats just contrary to any economists appreciation of global commerce. You just dont say, okay, mexico, france, et cetera, et cetera, country by country, theyre bad because we had a deficit with them. It is just very near sighted and dangerous. So lets go home. This is not directly in response, but one of the things i found peculiar about this particular aspect of debate is if you are trying to reduce a number, theres only two ways to do that, buy less or sell more. One of the things odd about the current debate is that the administrations focus has been 98 on buy less. What seems to be missing in all of this is export promotion. It astonishes me it is missing. Politically it is the easiest thing to do. The last three or four president s have come in with a grand export plan, climbing aboraair force whatever number is, going off and coming back and saying we just increased exports by whatever million dollars. Everyone has done this. I worked for ron brown and watched him do it and all of his successors have done it, too. This administration has missed that boat entirely. They dont talk about trade promotion, he their budget proposals would decimate people in government that do that. They focus only on the other half of the equation, which is by far the harder part of the equation to meet, which is buying less. As a former chair of the Advisory Committee at the xm bank i think i can point to this administrations lack of support for the xm bank is exactly what you are pointing to. Thank you very much. Rachel, library of congress. Many of you talked about the decision that came out of the g20 summit in terms of endorsing the oegb forum, on scale over capacity. I was curious, what sort of solutions could they actually come up with . What sort of enforcement could there be . Do you think it could be a precedent for how we deal with other issues such as aluminum . Well, i would merely repeat what i said before, that china has been very good at sliding off either making commitments or fulfilling commitments. It seems to me that the ced may be a little hint of how to do it, and that is, you know, unless you create a new cause of action that you can bring a case in the wto on mere overcapacity or maybe you pump up the trade laws so a higher margin theyre pretty high on china already or you can take overcapacity into account. It just seems to me it is a negotiation and that we just have to do what happened at the ced, and that is just say, this is what were talking about. You know, when you not only commit to take down a certain percentage of unnecessary capacity and stop building new stuff, which they keep doing, then we will talk about all of these other things that are on your agenda. I mean it is a very tough and frustrating position to take. It is going to anger a lot of american industries, especially those interested in exporting to china, but up until now nothing else has worked. Thats our leverage. Okay. Talking about leverage, i would like to tell a little story. That is a conversation i was part of with a very senior new official at usgr who made the case that we were fine things were great up until, lets say, the wto came into force, and, gosh, things went bad. You know, we started getting deficits and we were being treated unfairly and now were in this negative position where we have no leverage. We gave all of our leverage away with the gap for security, services, we cut our restraints but we and four other major players, but most of them did not, and thats true. They didnt. Most of the developed then developing world did not comply, did not go along with the scheduling commitments to the extent that we did, eu did, et cetera. So in a way theyre right, we lost leverage in trade negotiations. This argument this guy made, very senior guy, very seriously, is we have to regain our leverage. How do we regain our leverage . We use trade restraints. We use remedies. One country at a time, however it works, whichever applies, 232, 201, 301, et cetera, go to chad state of this and youll see. We will do it one at a time and ramp up the ante so we get leverage in negotiations. Whatever it takes to get that, we got to get it. Thats what this guy said. Very senior guy. I believe it based upon what has happened since. That was in may. So if anybody disagrees with that, i would like to hear it. I disagree with the theory. I dont disagree with the strategy. Wow. Okay. I do disagree with the strategy. I think, again, it goes back to this issue of there needs to be a longterm strategy to deal with the new kid on the block that is fundamentally different, and that is china. The Obama Administration had a strategy, whether you liked it or not, and that was the tpp. It was writing down a new agreement that had rules on how to deal with china down the road, on digital trade, on labor environment, anticorruption, lots of different issues. We havent seen what the Trump Administrations actual longterm plan to address the systemic issue that china is a fundamentally different type of economy than we are. So this could, you know, could be lets retaliate, lets impose trade barriers, but i dont see what the end game is to that under that approach unfortunately. Well, our time has come to the end. If theres a closing comment by any member of the panel, lets go for it. All right. Here is a dirty secret and everyone else in the trade community is going to hate me for saying this. If you want to get rid of trade deficit, it is not trade policy that gets rid of it. It is tax policy, it is health care policy, it is labor policy. Those are the real things that are going to drive whether u. S. Companies and u. S. Workers are competitive globally, not trade policy. The very fact that the and i dont blame them for doing this. The very fact that the retailers bought an ad on saturday night live regarding tax policy but never bought an ad on saturday night live regarding tpp i think shows they recognize what actually drives their competitiveness and what effects them the most. So about as much as we like to talk about trade policy, it is important, but it is not the most important thing as far as competitiveness of our companies and workers. The bipartisan agreement. Lets thank everybody. End of discussion. [ applause ] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up tuesday morning, minnesota republican congressman eric paul sen discusses the opioid epidemic. California democratic congressment talks about the russia investigation. Then David Hawkings of dq roll call will discuss congressional pay and benefits. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Tuesday morning. Join the discuss. 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